


A Terrible Thing to Lose.

by Archamasse



Category: Lost Girl
Genre: Dark Bo, F/F, Ysabeau, doccubus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-04 02:00:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2905154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archamasse/pseuds/Archamasse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Queen retires to her chambers with a thrall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Terrible Thing to Lose.

**Author's Note:**

> All reviews are appreciated. If you like it please pass it on.
> 
> Thanks for clicking.

Ysabeau strode into the chambers with all the bearing of a natural born queen, and waited impatiently for the heavy doors behind her to be closed.

She was not a queen, strictly speaking. She had outgrown that title a long time ago, and the moment the doors swung home, the regal angles left her posture and her hard expression faded. She sighed with relief and scanned the room.

Lauren was waiting for her on the bed already. She always was.

Bo wondered if she stayed there all day, just waiting for her, but she’d never asked. If that _was_ the case, she didn’t want to know – she preferred to imagine that Lauren still might have _something_ of her own that she wasn’t aware of, hadn’t requested, hadn’t instructed, couldn’t predict.

Lauren looked up at her adoringly. She waited patiently, watching her as she pulled off some of her jewellery and set it down on the dresser. Bo had begun the long process of retreating from the political stage life, and that, blessedly, meant calls for the baubles and pomp came less often. And being seen less in public also meant she didn’t have to parade Lauren around as the spoils of war so much. Which made no difference to Lauren, of course, but to Bo was an almighty reprieve.

“Sorry I’m so late back, I had a thing with some diplomats that dragged on a little longer than I expected.”

Lauren smiled, and Bo thought she would have given anything in the world to have her frown instead – to complain, or challenge her, or even just silently register some kind of irritation. But she would never do that, of course.

“It’s okay. I missed you. Did you miss me?”

Bo smiled reassuringly, and sat down next to her. Everything in the palace was fit for a High Queen, but she’d specifically sought out the very finest for her bed chambers, because Lauren spent so much time here.

She was wearing one of Bo’s favourite dresses today - Bo had told her they were all her favourites, so she wouldn’t wear the same one all the time.

“You know I always do.”

Bo stroked Lauren’s back to emphasise the point. A single, savage scar cleaved a line diagonally across her otherwise flawless skin, and Bo winced as her palm crossed it. She could have had it healed away, as she had done with all Lauren’s other injuries, but it had served a certain kind of PR value back at the start, and anyway, by now, it hurt her more than it hurt Lauren.

She’d put it there, of course. Well, not _her_ exactly, but her _Other_. Back when it still held sway. It was her Other who had made all of this possible – she’d claimed the fae and human worlds both for her own and crushed anybody who stood in her way. Her Other had taken this palace, her Other had wiped away the Light and Dark – and fae and human - divisions in a wash of blood. Her Other had seized power and fulfilled her destiny, and in the process, earned for her the monstrous reputation by which she ruled unchallenged for more generations than she cared to remember.

She was a tyrant. Feared and despised, and most importantly, obeyed. Her Other had done all of that for her, before Kenzi and Lauren had stopped her. And still, nowhere in any inch of her soul, could Bo find a way to be grateful to Her for that.

“Did I do something wrong?” Lauren asked with obvious dismay, seeing Bo frown slightly at her own thoughts.

“Oh Lauren, no,” she said, shaking her head softly, and felt herself smile too wide in reassurance. “No you haven’t done anything wrong at all, no.”

Lauren regarded her skeptically for another moment before smiling back. She would never contradict Bo, of course, but she could get agitated if she thought she was unhappy.

Bo vividly remembered the last time she saw rage, and defiance, and even _spite_ on Lauren’s features, albeit through the blue halo of her Other’s eyes. Lauren had come to face her - Lauren had confronted a monster who’d eaten up armies’ worth of ancient fae and countless desperate humans alike, and she’d stood tall and brave and beautiful.

It was a big shitty irony that Bo thought about a lot. That image of Lauren, bloody and proud, was exactly how she would like to remember her; but that would mean never forgetting. She could never forget why Lauren had come to her like that; and she could never forget that she, and her Other, had destroyed her for it. She’d looked the dreadful Ysabeau in her blazing blue eyes and told _her_  - _her_ Bo – that she was sorry.

 

 

Sorry for what, Bo wondered ever since. Sorry for setting her up for the trap? Sorry for burdening her with the lifetime of guilt she knew would follow?

Bo was inclined to think it was probably the latter. It would be just like Lauren to think like that; to waste the last moments of her life concerned about hurting somebody else. She could never know for sure though.

She’d never know. She’d never know so many things that went through Lauren’s mind, far too many, before she ruined her. She wasn’t sure how much Lauren could remember now. She could ask her, of course, but it would be useless. Lauren would only ever offer the answers she thought Bo wanted to hear.

She did know, from what Kenzi told her afterwards, that Lauren didn’t expect to survive. She knew Ysabeau would probably feed from her, she’d counted on it. Their whole stupid plan depended on it, they needed the Succubus to be so focused that Kenzi could get close. Close enough to hit her with a syringe and cast the charm and put the monster back where it belonged.

And, apparently, Lauren had just assumed that to be the end of her.

 

 

That was Lauren being Lauren again, though, of course. She’d expected to be killed, just like any number of countless, faceless, hopeless would-be heroes who’d thrown themselves at her, and apparently figured it would be worth it if it worked. She just didn’t understand how special she was, she never did. She was so smart in every other way, but never understood how precious she was.

It didn’t seem to have dawned on her that Ysabeau would _never_ have killed her, never have lost her like that. It didn’t occur to her that Ysabeau would want to keep her forever, keep her safe and hers, and mindless and loyal instead. 

Ysabeau hadn’t killed her. She’d done something else to her instead. She had thralled her somehow, uniquely and irreversibly. And somehow, she’d done it so entirely that all the druids and wizards in the world couldn’t fix it, or even explain it. Even when she – or rather “She” - had demanded it of them under pain of death. Whatever Ysabeau had taken away, it was gone. Lauren, who could cry and fight and hurt and feel and think for herself was gone. All that was left was an echo of her.

When this Lauren gazed at her, with that pure and perfect infatuation, Bo could see little deeper than her own reflection. The guarded sparks that used to fire in those dark, thoughtful eyes were gone. There was no trace, no hint of Lauren’s ferocious intellect, of the constant turning of her keen intelligence. There was just this; the simple, absolute devotion of a brutally subjugated mind.

But no, it wasn’t love, not really. Bo understood that now, better than she’d ever have wanted to. Love was grimy, earthy and real; it was scarred and vital and it had a gravity all of its own, because it was _real_ , and it lived and breathed. And this didn’t, this wasn’t real. This Lauren loved Bo simply because she could do nothing else. The person she’d been before, the Lauren that Bo loved _back_ … that Lauren loved her simply because she thought she was worth loving.

How wrong could such a smart woman be, Bo thought bitterly.

After the dust had settled, and their dumb plan had somehow worked, and Bo was Bo again, and she had screamed and wept and begged to know how Kenzi could let Lauren do something so stupid, it felt somehow deserved. Her sacrifice had doomed Bo to a conscience, just as surely as it threatened to drive her mad because of it. It had to be some kind of punishment, it had to be. And it had to be a punishment meant for her, because what could Lauren have done to have possibly earned it?

Sure. Some kind of penance, it had to be. A good one too, she couldn’t imagine anything worse. She could have the one person she wanted by her side forever, and always out of reach. She could catch glimpses of her, of the love of her life, from the corner of her eye as long as she lived; but she could never really _see_ her again. She had only this shade, this ghost of the woman she loved, to cling to and to haunt her.

Kind of poetic, really. Elegant. The Greeks would have been proud of it.

Sometimes, Bo would just feel angry at Lauren for letting her do this to her, for throwing herself away like that. Couldn’t Lauren, for all her reason, see why her own life was worth more than Bo’s by any measure at all? Couldn’t she see how crazy and irrational a bargain that was?

There was a time, ages ago, when Bo thought she might even learn to hate her. Bo had started to resent her, to push her away, to try to forget her, to have some peace for herself. But the problem was that Lauren, of course, didn’t understand. And the worse Bo’s behaviour became towards her, the more frantic she became in her efforts to please her, or at least not to _displease_ her anymore.

And that, Bo discovered, was an infinitely more painful thing to witness. Loving Bo had destroyed her, but still, here she was, and still, in so far as she wanted anything, all she wanted was Bo. Seeing her try to be, or do, whatever she thought Bo wanted hurt so much - but the alternative was simply unbearable.

 

 

 “No.” Bo said. “You haven’t done anything wrong. I was just remembering someone from a long time ago.”

Lauren looked at her cautiously.

“Who?”

“Somebody a lot like you” Bo said after a moment, brushing blonde hair from Lauren’s face. “I’ve talked about her before. She was very smart. She was brave, and she was good. And she was very beautiful.”

Lauren’s expression clouded a little.

“Did you love her?”

“Yes.” Bo could reply, truthfully. Thralls couldn’t really get jealous; it seemed natural to them that others would feel about Bo the way they did.

“- But not like I love you” Bo assured her anyway. “Honey, it’s late now, can we go to bed?”

Lauren nodded, apparently satisfied. Bo got up and stepped out of her dress. She left her things on the nightstand, and by the time she turned back around, Lauren had already slipped under the sheets to wait for her.

 

 

It was Kenzi’s idea to make use of Lauren. It took a long time for her to start forgiving Bo for the havoc Ysabeau had wrought, but the part of her that had never given up on her old friend had ultimately prevailed.

Still, she’d been changed. Kenzi had suffered and sacrificed just like everyone else under her Ysabeau's rule, and it had steeled her. This whole, awful charade, all of it was Kenzi’s idea, and it was Kenzi who realised the part Lauren would have to play in it. She grieved for what Ysabeau had done and what Bo had to live with, and she grieved for Lauren’s fate, but her keen grifter instincts had been hardened by bitter experience, and she knew the stakes were high.

Kenzi understood that it had been Ysabeau who seized power, and that until it solidified, only “Ysabeau” had a chance of holding it. It was Ysabeau who had obliterated all her rivals, and Ysabeau who’d brushed aside the Light and Dark resistances alike. So it would be Ysabeau who’d managed to claim even Doctor Lewis, the same human terrorist fae children had cried about at night, as her own plaything, as something she could now parade around to prove what she could make of her enemies.

When Kenzi had first proposed it, Bo had been appalled and outraged. It still made her nauseous, to exploit Lauren any more, for God’s sake, hadn’t she done enough to her already?

But they had no choice. Bo was sitting in a tyrant’s throne, and if she didn’t want to have to make fresh examples of people, this was how it had to be. A sudden power vacuum would only cost more innocent lives, and demand recriminations Bo couldn’t bear to inflict, but this damage, this damage was already done. She could never put Lauren back together, and she certainly couldn’t hurt her any more than she already had. So she’d had to keep it up.

And they did, they kept it up, this loathsome sham.

Apart from Kenzi, there was nobody else capable of detecting the shift – her subjects suspected nothing, and the palace court she inherited from Ysabeau had all been minor thralls. Little by little, she’d guided her regime somewhere far more benign, planting rumours of her firm hand even as she covertly installed mechanisms to protect her factions from each other, checks and balances towards some organic kind of equilibrium. Little by little, she’d dismantled the cruelties and excesses the fae had once taken for granted, and disarmed dissent with diplomacy cloaked as threat.

It had taken time, and there had been trials along the way, and the result was imperfect. But ultimately, they’d made it. She had fulfilled the big destiny she’d heard so much about. She had united Light and Dark and fae and human, even if only in a shared awe and dread. She had given them a common enemy and a common idol, and marshalled them somewhere better than they’d come from, whether they realised it or not. This was the role she had to play to make Ysabeau’s terrible crimes worthwhile. And Lauren, trotted out now and then as a trophy, played her own part in turn as a cautionary reminder.

She hated it all, and she was impossibly tired of it, but at last, the end was in sight. She had gradually contrived to construct systems and functions and institutions that could operate without her direct hand, and soon it would be possible to remove herself from the equation altogether.

 

 

Lauren moved gratefully into her embrace, and Bo settled around her and kissed her on the shoulder. It was a hell in itself, this kind of closeness. She held Lauren in her arms, and listened to her breathe and sleep - but she couldn’t touch her, not really.

There was a while when Lauren would make sexual advances towards her, of course thinking that was what she would want – but Bo had cried and cried, and Lauren hated to see her cry, so she stopped.  It confused her, but she’d stopped.  She didn’t question anything much beyond that. All she wanted to do was whatever Bo wanted, she didn’t need to understand it.

No, Bo had never touched her like that, not since Lauren had been lost. Some of those times though - and she hated herself for it - some of those times she had been tempted. She missed Lauren so, so much. She ached in her heart for the intimacy of their lovemaking, to be with her again, but as time went by, even the details, the memories they made together, were getting further and further away from her and that was eating her alive.

She would lie here, feeling Lauren’s muscles and breaths move against her as she slept, thinking about the last time they had been together. She would wonder if it would have been different if she’d known, imagining what she would have done for her if she had another chance, trying to decide if it would have been _better_ to know. In all the time she had to think about it, she hadn't reached a conclusion.

Yes, this was hell, and she could have as much as she wanted. What her sages and druids _had_ managed to come up with - desperate to bargain for their lives with the monster they thought she still was - was the one thing she’d have given anything for, once. Lauren - the old Lauren - would probably never have forgiven her for the price she’d paid for it, but… it was what it was. 

They had offered her a way to sustain Lauren indefinitely, and in her grief she had accepted. She had offered it to Kenzi, too, but when she learned the nature of the magic involved, she’d been horrified. It was the grand sin for which Bo knew  _she_ , and not her alter ego, was damned. 

Bo expected Kenzi to hate her all over again for having it done to Lauren, knowing Lauren would have been outraged to think people had been hurt to prolong her life, but she didn’t seem to. All she could see in Kenzi’s features was pity. Kenzi was smart like that; she understood already what Bo would have to live with, even after she was long gone, and she couldn’t find it in herself to heap any further punishment on her than what she already had in store. 

Kenzi had lived out the kind of life she’d deserved. Bo had seen to that, even though it had been far away from here.

Lauren though, Lauren would live as long as Bo did. She would never age, so long as they could both be sustained – Bo would feed and feed her in turn, and so long as she did, she could still have this scrap of her to cling to. There had been times when Bo had wondered if it was worse to have only this much of her, rather than nothing at all – perhaps the right thing would have been to let her go at last.

Wouldn’t she have wanted that, the old Lauren?

But then Bo thought about what that would actually mean. When she thought about the reality of it, of watching Lauren’s body slowly die, of watching the stolen life of her body leave her, the question withered away. It wasn’t an option, to lose any more of her. She couldn’t bear it.

 

 

 “Sorry I was so busy today” she said softly.

“You’re busy a lot lately” Lauren murmured, with the hint of pout in her voice.

Bo smiled.

“I know. I have a lot of stuff to wrap up, but it won’t be for long, I promise. We’ll have plenty of time together soon.”

“We will?” Lauren asked brightly, turning around to look at her.

“We will” Bo said, stroking Lauren’s face softly. “That’s why I’m so busy right now, just tying up some loose ends.”

“I don’t understand?” Lauren said, frowning.

“I was going to keep this a surprise, but I don’t want you to think I don’t want to be with you, okay?”

Lauren looked away, embarrassed, and Bo could see that was exactly what had been worrying her.

“We’re going to go travelling together, would you like that?”

“Just you and me?” Lauren asked cautiously, not quite daring to hope.

“Just you and me.” Bo nodded.

“I don’t know what to say” Lauren said breathlessly, clearly thrilled.

“We’ll go travelling together, and you can show me all the places you’ve been.”

 _And then_ , she didn't say, _I’ll use the last of my Grandfather’s blood to write us out of the world._ _I_ _will take you away with me, somewhere nobody can look, and we’ll fade away together._ _You and I will spend the rest of our life together with each other._

“Lauren?” she asked quietly.  “Would you ...?”

Lauren rolled around and brought her arms around Bo’s head and shoulders. She knew Bo liked to fall asleep resting her head against her chest, with arms around her.

She didn’t know, of course, that Bo liked it because it meant that when she woke up from her nightmares, she could have a precious few split seconds before she remembered anything, anything except the instinctively familiar form around her own. She could have that little window between waking and being awake, when everything seemed as it should be. 

She could feed from any number of tributes. But she would always sleep in Lauren’s bed.

 

The End. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.
> 
>  
> 
> Out of interest, this story is older than Widening Gyre, and Terrible Thing To Waste was initially intended as a kind of alternate to it. I didn't post it because I wasn't satisfied with how it turned out, but I'm clearing out my Lost Girl folder and I didn't want to leave it rotting on my hard drive. 
> 
> Hope it was worth a read to somebody.


End file.
